I support David Letterman's beard

Last night my old friend Dave was back on the television.

Lots of newspaper articles and blogs and tv shows have spent a lot of time talking about the late night hosts coming back. What did it mean, who would do better, who had writers, who didn’t. The gist of the back story is that Dave owns his own show, and he could negotiate separately with the Writer’s Guild, whereas Jay’s show, Conan’s show, etc., are owned by the networks. NBC essentially, as far as I understand it, told Jay and Conan to go back to work.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily unfair or wrong for Jay and Conan to go back; it is difficult to balance the needs of a staff of 200 or so that is out of work because of 20 people. And I’m not so naïve as to think that Dave wouldn’t have gone back to work eventually, with or without writers. I think it’s very clear that Dave works hard, and doesn’t relish sitting around when he could be doing his show.

Throughout the strike, however, I think Dave has shown that he is the class act of late night. He was the first to agree to pay non-striking staff out of pocket. He had a great financial stake in coming back to work as soon as possible. But I think what last night showed is that Dave didn’t need to come back with his writers. Yes, he had a top ten list and something of a monologue, but a lot of the filler between guests was the kind of segment that Dave would have done if he hadn’t had his writers, such as “Know Your Staff,” where an associate producer came out and just talked about what she did, her previous jobs, and showed pictures of her baby. Hal Gurnee was back with some network time killers. Dave even talked about having a guy come out and shave the now infamous strike beard, a reference to a way that he filled time during the 1988 writer’s strike.

So why do all that work to negotiate and come back with writers? Because he is a class act. Dave’s writers have also agreed to donate a percentage of their salaries to the striking writers’ fund, which I think speaks highly of them as well.

Perhaps I’m biased by how much I hate Jay Leno. He makes my skin crawl, he always has, and I wouldn’t watch him if he was the only thing on 2500 channels. And I know that a lot of people don’t find Dave very funny---I was explaining that 1988 writer’s strike shave to someone and they didn’t find it amusing at all.

All I know is I’m glad that my late-night TV friend is back, and that he’s back in a way that’s both typically goofy (in comedy), and particularly distinguished (in relation to the strike).